I agree completely with Pete that Krauthammer’s column is a great blow to Krugman. It’s made all the more forceful by the fact that Krauthammer is not only a brilliant columnist but also a psychiatrist by training. I also agree that this may be a tipping point in Krugman’s disgraceful career as a columnist. For one thing, he is intellectually lazy and seems to operate on the principle that a Krugman assertion is, ipso facto, an established fact. He rarely buttresses his assertions with evidence. His one bit of evidence that ”eliminationist rhetoric” in American political life is overwhelmingly on...

Could Michael Kinsley possibly be any more predictable? His review of George Bush's "Decision Points," appearing in today's Sunday New York Times, is precisely the smug piece of sneering partisanship you would expect to find in this paper and from this quintessential liberal MSM elitist. As the headline indicates, Kinsley flatly accuses W of "stealing" the 2000 election. Kinsley offers no proof, but surely most of the people who will read this review require none. They take it as a matter of deep partisan faith. Speaking of faith, the former Crossfire man is mocking of Bush's. Consider this excerpt: "[H]e...

“Almost daily” viewers of Fox News, the authors said, were 31 points more likely to mistakenly believe that “most economists have estimated the health care law will worsen the deficit;” were 30 points more likely to believe that “most scientists do not agree that climate change is occurring;” and were 14 points more likely to believe that “the stimulus legislation did not include any tax cuts.” They were also 13 points more likely to mistakenly believe “the auto bailout only occurred under Obama;” 12 points more likely to believe that “when TARP came up for a vote most Republicans opposed...

The articles published today and in coming days are based on thousands of United States embassy cables, the daily reports from the field intended for the eyes of senior policy makers in Washington. The New York Times and a number of publications in Europe were given access to the material several weeks ago and agreed to begin publication of articles based on the cables Sunday online. The Times believes that the documents serve an important public interest, illuminating the goals, successes, compromises and frustrations of American diplomacy in a way that other accounts cannot match.

Sarah Palin, the former Alaska governor, is among the more natural populist politicians of our time, frequently critiquing elites in the press, the Democratic Party, and the Republican establishment. It is one of the reasons — along with her working-class background and the sense of authenticity that she can often convey — that she is so popular with some voters. One potential problem for Ms. Palin, however, is that plenty of well-to-do and well-educated voters — those whom we might think of as belonging to the elite — will be participating in the Republican primaries. Three recent surveys of Republican...

Complete title: With Angle Up 4, NYT on Harry Reid: ‘Some Republicans Fear Losing Such a Powerful Ally in Washington’ In a classic example of liberal media bias, the front page of the print edition of today’s New York Times carries an above-the-fold story about the Nevada U.S. Senate race--headlined, “In Nevada, It’s Hold Nose and Cast Vote.” At one point, the story says: “Some Republicans fear losing such a powerfully ally in Washington—no matter that his name is Reid—at a time when Nevada is in precarious economic shape.”But the story does not quote a single Republican from Nevada or elsewhere, or site a single...

In monitoring New York Times coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, I've served up numerous examples of how its correspondents spin, distort, bend and ignore the truth so as to paint Israel in a bad light. But there are no polite adjectives for the idiotic lengths to which Times correspondent Isabel Kershner goes to take a poke at Israel in her Oct. 18 article about resumption of mediation efforts to negotiate release of Sgt. Gilad Shalit from his lengthy Hamas captivity in Gaza ("Israel Renews Bid to Free Soldier Held by Hamas" page A4). This bit of poisonous anti-Israel propaganda...

In a review of Avner Cohen's "The Worst Kept Secret," Ethan Bronner, the Times' Jerusalem bureau chief, joins a growing tide of pressures on Israel -- from the Arab League, the 57-nation Organization of the Islamic Conference, and even the Obama administration -- to come clean and open its nuclear program to global scrutiny. Israel's half-century-old policy of nuclear ambiguity -- "don't ask, don't tell" whether it has a nuclear arsenal -- has served it well as its ultimate deterrent. Today, it keeps Iranian leaders, in their vow to destroy the Jewish state, guessing whether an all-out missile attack on Israel from...

THERE’S always a revolution of some sort going on in America, be it political, cultural, or technological. Chairman Mao, who loved revolution, would have been envious of America. Now that summer has ended, the United States is gripped by revolutionary political fever as the November mid-term election approaches. The only thing on Washington’s mind right now is domestic politics. Eighty per cent of voters are angry at government and frightened by the nation’s sagging economy and nearly 10% jobless rate. High unemployment is always very bad news for the party in power. President Barack Obama’s ratings have plummeted. Democrats are...

...But for voters of all stripes, Tuesday’s primaries should illuminate the growling face of a new fringe in American politics — and provide the incentive for level-headed voters to become enthusiastic about the midterm election. Republican leaders have to decide if they want the tiny fraction of furious voters who have showed up at the primary polls to steer them into the swamp for years ahead. They have a chance to repudiate the worst of the Tea Party crowd and show that they can govern without appealing to the basest political instincts. So far, they have preferred to greedily capitalize...

While speaking at a conference in London, chairman and publisher of The New York Times Arthur Sulzberger, Jr. made a major statement about the future of his publication: "We will stop printing The New York Times sometime in the future, date TBD."

New York Times writer Adam Nagourney asked an interesting question Sunday: "Does It Matter if Obama Loses the Pundits?" The question was precipitated by the President's abysmal performance in his Tuesday Gulf Coast oil spill address and, in particular, how media members on both sides of the aisle gave him pretty poor grades. Finding this obviously inconvenient, Nagourney set out to defend Obama from his critics by surprisingly making the case that nobody cares what pundits say anymore. There was a time when the after-action takes of big commentators were sought out by Americans trying to assess the latest news...

Sheila Bair, the chairwoman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, began her week with a bit of honest heresy, the kind that only she, among all the bank regulators, seems willing to utter in the wake of the financial crisis. Deep in a speech she delivered Monday before the Housing Association of Nonprofit Developers — a speech that got surprisingly little attention — Ms. Bair listed her three main recommendations to “put the mortgage industry on a sounder footing.” The first two were the usual suspects: better consumer education and protection, and a reformed securitization market. Her third proposal, however,...

Alvin Greene filed for our sins. Greene, an unemployed 32-year-old, is currently the most famous Democratic candidate in South Carolina. He just won the nomination to run against Senator Jim DeMint in November, overcoming major obstacles such as not having campaign staff, campaign funds, a campaign Web site, cellphone or personal computer. And then there’s the felony charge pending for allegedly showing a University of South Carolina student a pornographic picture. I’m sorry we have to keep coming back to South Carolina. There are 50 states, and I’m sure every single one has some really peculiar political phenomena that we...

Attorney in alleged victim's lawsuit seeks to document charges against former local priest New London - A woman who says the late Catholic priest Rev. Thomas Shea sexually abused her when she was a girl is trying to force the Diocese of Norwich to release 661 pages of documents - including a 2005 letter about Shea that current Bishop Michael Cote sent to then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who is now Pope Benedict XVI. Diocesan attorneys are fighting an attempt by New London attorney Robert Reardon to force the release of the documents. Reardon has filed a lawsuit on behalf of the...

LOS ANGELES — The overwhelming majority of Americans think that the country’s immigration policies need to be seriously overhauled. And despite protests against Arizona’s stringent new immigration enforcement law, a slim majority of Americans support it, even though they say it may lead to racial profiling. With the signing of the Arizona on April 23 and reports of renewed efforts in Washington to rethink immigration, there has been an uptick in the number of Americans who describe illegal immigration as a serious problem. But the poll — conducted April 28 through May 2 with 1,079 adults, and with a margin...

In two articles, the New York Times offers us essentially the same theme and point of view, first from a black columnist, Charles Blow, and then from a white one, Frank Rich. You could render the theme as: White people are dwindling away and there's nothing you can do about it, Ha, Ha! Each writer seems to impart satisfaction over the fact that, at long last, whites will have a minimum influence in the nation founded by their ancestors. The theme is in keeping with former President Bill Clinton's discourse when he exulted, back in the 1990s, over the fact...

I have just received word that the New York Times is preparing to go public with a list of names of Americans covertly working in Afghanistan providing force protection for our troops, as well as the rest of our Coalition Forces. If the Times actually sees this through, the red ink they are drowning in will be nothing compared to the blood their entire organization will be covered with. Make no mistake, the Times is about to cause casualty rates in Afghanistan to skyrocket. Each and every American should be outraged. As chronicled here, here, here, and here the Central...

American public education, a perennial whipping boy for both the political right and left, is once again making news in ways that show how difficult it will be to cure what ails the nation’s schools. Only last week, President Obama declared that every high school graduate must be fully prepared for college or a job (who knew?) and called for significant changes in the No Child Left Behind law. In Kansas City, Mo., officials voted to close nearly half the public schools there to save money. And the Texas Board of Education approved a new social studies curriculum playing down...